Reading and Writing Reciprocity: The Teacher’s Answer to Fostering Accelerated Learning for Striving Students in Small Group Reading Intervention

Wieseler Nowatzki, L. (2020). Writing: The striving student’s answer to accelerated learning in small group reading intervention. Reading and writing are reciprocal processes critical to core instruction. Oftentimes students who need additional support outside of the regular classroom receive reading services in small groups facilitated by experts, such as interventionists or specialists. Too often the link between reading and writing is broken or lost and the emphasis is placed solely on reading. Due to the disconnect of the two core practices not being taught together, much learning is lost. Influential names in the literacy world such as Fountas and Pinnell (1996, 2001, 2009, 2013, 2017a, 2017b, Clay (1975, 1991a, 1991b, 2001, 2010, 2013, 2014, 2016), Richardson and Lewis (2018), Allington (2013), and Serravallo (2015, 2017) (to name a few) help define and model what effective reading intervention should entail to foster acceleration for students who are struggling in reading and writing. Research has shown that accelerated reading is possible through one-to-one instruction in Reading Recovery. Through the years as a reading interventionist, I have had the desire to search for an efficient structure for small group reading interventions that effectively weaves reading and writing together to promote acceleration in literacy. Reading and writing are closely related as they are both problem-solving activities. Reading is about receiving a message and writing is about message sending, therefore learning to read contributes to learning to write, and vice versa (Clay, 2001). The Capstone project was my desire to learn how to implement a reading intervention to accelerate striving students’ ability to read. The capstone informed my question: within the structure of small group interventions, how can integrating Reading Recovery’s writing/cut-up sentence component foster accelerated learning for striving students? To acquire the desired results, I have created a resource that marries the writing/cut-up sentence component of Reading Recovery to the lesson structure of small group intervention. The creation and implementation of this resource for teachers of literacy will provide the most effective small group intervention instruction, which will foster accelerated learning for our striving students